This invention relates generally to interactive or enhanced television content.
Interactive or enhanced television content generally involves the distribution of television programming accompanied by additional content. The additional content, sometimes called an enhancement, may be accessed within the broadcast stream or at a remote location, for example over the Internet. The additional content may be described as a resource that may be accessed through a trigger broadcast with the enhanced television content. In an enhanced television distribution system, announcements are used to announce currently available programming to the receiver. Having received the announcement, a receiver may listen to a specified port and address to obtain the announced information.
An electronic programming guide (EPG) is content that is used to determine the programming related information available on a current connection. A current connection may be an analog or digital video distribution source. As examples, a connection may include a cable connection, a broadcast connection or a satellite connection. An electronic programming guide may be in the form of a graphical user interface or presentation files that indicate a channel-to-programming map or channel map. The guide enables the user to determine what programs are available on what channels.
In enhanced television distribution schemes, an electronic programming guide may be distributed through the television content distribution system. An electronic programming guide may actually be distributed to a plurality of receivers or at least the electronic programming guide may be sufficiently identified through the broadcast data to enable it to be accessed by the receiver.
Conventionally, the distribution of an electronic programming guide is indicated in different ways in different television distribution systems. For example, Broadcast Plus may utilize announcements with a required field a=cid:XXXX. Other entities send such announcements without the required Broadcast Plus format. Thus, Broadcast Plus can not receive the enhancements based for example on the client tool kit distributed by Intel Corporation. Similarly, WebTV® based content (from Microsoft Corporation) announces the availability of various resources in different ways. Thus, there is no uniform way to announce the availability of an electronic programming guide that is recognized by all the available system/software providers.
Therefore, there is a need for a way to enable receivers to determine that an electronic programming guide is available regardless of the hardware or software utilized.